Why does the world exist? In other words, why have something rather than nothing? This is the final secret philosophy and physics called “The main question of metaphysics”.
First, the question itself may be wrong. “Nothing” is a human abstraction used to describe the absence of concrete objects. The concept cannot be applied to all reality. If there really is “nothing”, then nothing can exist, which contradicts the brute fact that we came to question.
In the fifth century BC, Elea’s pre-Socratic Parmenides asserted that “nothing” could be spoken or thought about. In general, in order to think about something, it must exist or pre-exist in some sense. Logically, nothing comes from nothing or from something. If there is something, nothing can happen and vice versa.
Quantum Physics and the Multiverse
When we try to imagine anything, we find that we cannot. In our mind, there is still, for example, light and space. “Nothing” can be an indescribable state devoid of the laws and properties that allow it to maintain itself. So “nothing” is an unstable state that must give rise to “something”.
Many physicists tell us that an absolute vacuum is impossible. Quantum fields are constantly changing, creating energy and particles from what we perceive as empty space. What we perceive as empty space is actually a foamy “bubble” in which virtual particles and fields are constantly present and flickering outside. Some theories go so far as to propose a multiverse in which every possible universe naturally exists, making our universe one of many.
However, the quantum field something. Quantum physics explains how to get “something from something” and not just “absolute nothing”. Also, quantum physics implies the laws of quantum physics without being able to explain their origin.
Leibniz’s Cosmological Argument
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) built the entire metaphysical system of monads on the basis of only two main principles of thought: the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason.
- The principle of contradiction says that a proposition and its negation cannot be true at the same time; therefore, if one is true, the other must be false, and vice versa.
- The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or cause, even if those reasons are not known to us. There are no hard facts.
According to Leibniz, the ontological argument for the existence of God, according to which the concept of God as the most perfect being, implies his existence, because it proves that only a perfect being exists. if it is possible.
In 1697 he wrote a short treatise. On the ultimate origin of thingsin this he supplements the ontological argument with a “cosmological argument” based on the principle of sufficient causation, according to which the cause of a universe consisting of a contingent series of dependent causes can only be a first, necessary, or uncaused cause.
The best of all possible worlds
In On the ultimate origin of thingsLeibniz also asks why there is something rather than nothing, and gives a poetic answer: because good and beautiful things require existence.
… because something exists rather than nothing, there is a certain striving for existence in possible things, or in possibility or essence itself, or (so to speak) striving for existence; in a word, essence tends to exist by itself. Further, it follows that all possible things, i.e., everything representing essence or possible reality, tend with equal right to existence in proportion to the amount of essence or reality, or the degree of perfection in them, since perfection is nothing but the amount of essence. It is clear from this that what exists within the infinite combination of possibilities and possible series is that from which the most essence or possibility arises…
Leibniz used this idea to bolster his argument that ours is the best of all possible worlds.
